Those overpaid stagnants at the top need to leave Esalen ASAP. As the author of May 24 meeting report states, Mac, David, John, Steve, Chris — and I’d add Eric Erickson — would steer Esalen light years ahead from it’s decline of the past 20 years. This is my first post here. I’ve attended and assisted many workshops over the past couple decades and worked at Esalen for time enough to understand the dynamics. Gordon and Nancy Wheeler have stifled creativity more and more and the past few years have really been proving the observations and concerns aware people have been stating for years. Esalen is so personally transformative and precious to many people, and while not all problems will magically disappear, a new leadership and community partnership will be tremendously positive and beneficial. I sure look forward to the day when I can visit (potentially long term) even for a few hours and feel the shift. May it be so! AHO! Many Kudos to Esaleaks people for keeping the flame alive.

1 Response to Transformative and precious

I too, was an Esalen junkie, and my late husband, who’d been art therapist for Fritz Perls in the Sixties, never missed an opportunity to stay among the butterflies,hot baths and seekers. But those were the golden days of my mentor Joe Campbell, of Claudio Naranjo, Gregory Bateson, Al Chuang…when Stan Grof helped us along our mushroom-strewn paths with his oak-tree solidness, indifferent but loving to all of us who sought some elusive answer. Was it because most of the great minds who created Esalen workshops died that the organization became so “precious” and commercialized? Who knows…but after the early 90′s, we took off to the mountains of Mexico to live a far more authentic journey. Sorry to see Esalen go the way of the corporate world, but my memories will continue to inform me of Michael Murphy’s original, prophetic dream of spiritual growth.